Not that I'm saying anything about how promo videos are made and what they are shot with, but I was the actor/camera guy used for Sonys NEX-7 camera promo from last year. I would be VERY VERY VERY surprised if any of this was shot with anything but a red or alexa for video and who knows what they might have used for stills. Just saying. Little surprised as well from the promo itself. I thought the NEX-7 promo was much better but I just might be a little biased here ;)

@Sage

What exactly did VK do to improve DR? Last time I checked he has never done anything to the sensor.

@peternap

You haven't seen any unedited footage from it yet. If it has vastly "improved DR" like they claim then that would be a nice feature to have.

As far as price goes I don't believe the GH3 will not be more than $1299 for the body only. That is less than half of what the BM camera will cost right?

@mpgxsvcd Nothing about those photos looked inconceivable to have been taken with a camera in this class. And on the video side, a high end camera wouldn't display the level of rolling shutter present in the shot of the train speeding past.

if DR was as important as you folks make it out to be then the film industry would just stop buying lighting equipment, throw away their bounce materials and fill their dumpsters full of frost and diffusion and just use natural lighting for everything. You know, because you guys think only maximum DR matters which means that all that lighting equipment that the film industry uses to REDUCE DR doesn't mean anything. Crap. Proper lighting is meant to compress the dynamic range into a range that is easily seen by the eye and by the film and also makes things look interesting as a useful byproduct.

When its getting released??? lets celebrate the Gh3 with 12-35 x vario and 35-100 vario x lenses!!

What seems really really strange to me is that they have leaked so damn raw video presentation just three days before supposed official release..

More so that film itself is in the 14 stop of DR. So the argument is a little bit moot. Yes lighting is still very very important because you have to also shape it.

No, that promo vid was shot with the gh2. (as it´s the only cam available until gh3) ;)

@Cde My last comment was more directed towards the thoughts that no company would do such a thing. That's just plain silly to think that way. I've seen footage shot on a red and messed with in post to look like a less cameras footage. You never know what happens when they film these things. OS not 100%, camera failure. I've seen it. We'll see when the finised version comes out. I've seen many industry professionals fooled by this. Not saying it's cool, just saying.

@svart @kholi

Hollywood lighting techniques were perfected in the film era and are optimized to make the most of the physical properties of film media. Digital image sensors differ from film in at least two important ways:

• Film responds logarithmically to light as does the human eye; image sensors respond linearly.

• Film preserves color data in analog detail; image sensors are digitized with coarse quantization.

The RGBG photocells in the GH2's image sensor are digitized to 12-bit precision in the camera's RAW still photo files. As with all digital sensors, this linear 12-bit range must be scaled by a logarithmic gamma curve to make the results look natural to the human eye. Image editors that work directly with RAW color data allow you to manipulate the dynamic range and color balance of the image in its original linear data format, before it's converted into a lower-precision format with a gamma curve that suits the human eye. This can produce image quality that rivals analog film.

With JPEG and AVCHD encoding, the GH2's 12-bit RAW data is remapped by the Film Mode's gamma curve and compressed down to 8-bit 4:2:0 color depth. While this does not reduce the camera's dynamic range, it degrades the precision of the encoded color data, particularly in near-black shadow details. Image editors that work with 8-bit color data are limited in the extent they can manipulate the dynamic range and color balance of the image without producing unsightly banding and digital quantization effects.

The "flat" gamma profiles that are popular with high-end cinema cameras produce high-quality results only so long as the image sensor's color data is preserved at near-RAW precision levels. If you attempt to mimic these low-contrast profiles on an 8-bit 4:2:0 camera like the GH2, its low-precision quantization will produce lower quality results than profiles that make use of the full dynamic range of the image sensor. That is the brutal reality of 8-bit color spaces.

There is one case, however, where reducing the dynamic range of a GH2 video can improve image quality. If you use fill lights to illuminate the shadows, you can boost the level of the darkest details above the coarsely quantized bottom end of the histogram. That will enable the AVCHD encoder to digitize shadow details with far better precision, and post-production grading will reveal much less noise and banding in the shadows. Using fill lighting in this way mimics the ability of cinema cameras to lift the pedestal of their gamma curves and flatten the DR of the recording. Since the GH2 lacks a pedestal adjustment, fill lighting is the best way to achieve this effect.

Yeah, they could never set that shot up again with another camera. NM.